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Nordidactica – Journal of Humanities and Social Science Education

Canon and archive in messages from Oslo Cathedral Square in the aftermath of July

22nd

2011

Sidsel Lied & Sidsel Undseth Bakke

Nordidactica 2013:1

ISSN 2000-9879

The online version of this paper can be found at: www.kau.se/nordidactica

Nordidactica

- Journal of Humanities and Social

Science Education

2013:1

http://www.kau.se/nordidactica

NORDIDACTICA – JOURNAL OF HUMANITIES AND SOCIAL SCIENCE EDUCATION

ISSN 2000-9879

2013:1 34-56

34

Canon and archive in messages from Oslo Cathedral Square in the aftermath of July 22

nd

2011

Prof. Dr. Sidsel Lied, Hedmark University College, Norway

MA Sidsel Undseth Bakke, Trysil upper secondary school/Hedmark University

College, Norway

Abstract: In this article we ask if central values which people were in dialogue

with in the memorial messages from Oslo Cathedral Square in the aftermath of

July 22nd

2011, may be seen as a part of Norwegian cultural memory, and if so,

how. We answer this question in the affirmative, by elaborating on

presentations of the Norwegian flag as a symbol of the values unity and

solidarity, and on presentations of love and roses as weapons promoting the

values love, humanity and calmness. In our discussion we have drawn on theory

of cultural memory and suggested that the use of the Norwegian flag in the

messages may be understood in the frame of Assmann’s term “canon”,

representing the active part of cultural remembrance, and that the message

from the use of roses and hearts may be understood in the frame of the term

“archive”, representing the passive part of remembrance.

KEYWORDS: MEMORIAL MESSAGES, CRITICAL EVENT, VALUES, CULTURAL MEMORY, THE

NORWEGIAN FLAG, LOVE AND ROSES AS WEAPONS

Aubout the authors.

Sidsel Lied is Professor of education in Religion, Beliefs and Ethics (RLE) at

Faculty of Education and Science, Hedmark University College (HUC), Norway, and

visiting professor at CSD, Karlstad’s University, Sweden. Her field of research is the

diverse and pluralistic classroom. She is a co-leader of HUC’s strategic area of

research Education and Diversity and the leader of HUC’s Research Ethics

Committee.

Sidsel Undseth Bakke is MA in Christian knowledge and teaches the subjects

Norwegian as well as Religion and ethics at Trysil upper secondary school. She is a

former PPU student at HUC, and has done some work as Lied’s research assistance in

the CVN project.

CANON AND ARCHIVE IN MESSAGES FROM OSLO CATHEDRAL SQUARE IN THE

AFTERMATH OF JULY 22ND 2011


35

Introduction

On July 22nd

2011 Anders Behring Breivik bombed the Government buildings in

central Oslo. Eight people were killed and many wounded. He also shot and killed 69

youths and wounded many more on the small island of Utøya in Hole municipality

where the Labour Party’s youth were having their summer camp.

Prime Minister Stoltenberg characterised this event as the worst atrocity Norway

has seen since the Second World War (Stoltenberg, 2011a). And in a panel discussion

at the conference “Den offentlige sorgen etter 22.juli” (The public grief in the

aftermath of July 22nd

) at Litteraturhuset in Oslo on June 12th 2012, State Secretary

Hans Kristian Amundsen emphasised that Stoltenberg and his staff were starting the

efforts of formulating an overriding value message to the Norwegian nation

immediately after this critical event (my notes; see also Stormark, 2011). This focus

on values became evident even in the first speeches from Stoltenberg and the royal

family in the days that followed: the values of openness and democracy, empathy,

solidarity and love constituted the hub in these speeches.

Ordinary people also sent their value messages. These messages were, inter alia,

expressed at memorial sites which were spontaneously established across the country.

Here flowers, candles, teddy bears, greetings in the form of verbal texts and drawings

etc. were placed. One of the most prominent of these memorial places was Oslo

Cathedral Square:

FIG. 1

(Picture retrieved from Graven, 2012)

People from all over Norway came here, put down their greetings, and stood

together sharing the shock caused by the terror.

This article’s aim is firstly to give a short overview of the messages which were

placed in the public sphere of Oslo Cathedral Square1 in the aftermath of July 22

nd

1 By Oslo Cathedral Square we here mean the Square facing onto Kirkegaten, the area around

Wexelsstatuen, Kirkeristen, and the Cathedral wall.




36

2011, and which consist of drawings with or without texts. Secondly it is to look

further into two aspects of these messages: presentations of the Norwegian flag as a

symbol of unity and solidarity, and presentations of love and roses as weapons. It is

also an aim to try out theory of cultural memory2 as an analytical tool when analysing

the utterances.

Research questions and theoretical perspectives

The article’s research question

This article is a part of the project Critical Events, Values and National Self-

Understanding (the CVN project).3 In this project my dataset consists of the part of

the memorial messages which in the period from July 22nd

to August 18th were placed

on the Cathedral Square and which consist of drawings with and without texts. So far

Bakke and I have consulted 1834 utterances. That represents about 15% of the total

amount of the 12 019 utterances (texts, drawings and multimodal messages consisting

of texts and drawings) which were placed on the Oslo Cathedral Square in this period.

For this article we specifically ask if central values which people were in dialogue

with in these utterances may be seen as a part of Norwegian cultural memory, and if

so, how.

We want to emphasise that the huge amount of texts and drawings which were

made public in Oslo were collected, were preserved and digitalised by the National

Archives of Norway. They have done an impressive job. A part of the material has

been published on the Archives’ website, but the CVN project has been allowed

access to the whole database under certain conditions.

2 Thanks to Professor Dr. Elisabet Haakedal at Agder University, Norway, who made me aware

of the possibilities inherent in this theoretical perspective and discussed it with me. 3 a) In the CMV-project four senior researchers explore popular responses to a critical event,

the dynamics at work in construction of national identity and the position of key values in such

a process. The four are: Professor Dr. Sidsel Lied, Hedmark University College, Norway and

Karlstad University, Sweden (project leader); Senior Lecturer Dr. Kerstin von Brömssen,

Karlstad University and University of Gothenburg, Sweden; Associate Professor Dr. Hans

Lödén, Karlstad University, Sweden; Professor Dr. Sturla Sagberg, Queen Maud University

College, Trondheim, Norway. MA Sidsel Undseth Bakke, lecturer at Trysil upper secondary

school and former PPU-student at Hedmark University College, is doing some work as Lied’s

research assistant. The CVN-project asks: What do the texts and drawings placed on Oslo

Cathedral Square, at Youngstorget and in Utvika in the immediate aftermath of the terror

attacks of 22nd

of July 2011 say about understanding of Norwegian national identity? (Lödén).

What does this material tell us about what values people were in dialogue with when

encountering this critical event? (Lied). How are values of hope and altruism reflected in the

material, if at all? (Sagberg). How are students’ talk and reflections on the event and the

ideology of Breivik articulated three years later? (von Brömssen).

b) This present article is written by Lied. She is the article’s “I”. But Bakke has participated

greatly in reading, exploring and categorising the material. She is therefore noted as co-author

and a part of the article’s “we”.




37

Central concepts and theoretical perspectives

We use the concept dialogue in line with Thomas Luckmann and Mikhail Baktin as

any interaction through language or other symbolic means, including written or oral

dialogue, inner dialogue, spoken, silent or vague dialogue, dialogue expressed through

action or signs, accepting or critical dialogue, and dialogical relations between

utterances of different kinds. The core of the Bakhtinian dialogue is to highlight

diversity, and the thought that the individual is in continuous dialogue with his/her

social and cultural communities in every process of meaning-making he/she is

involved in, as well as the will to live with contradictions (Bakhtin, 1979/1986,

1981/1998; Dysthe, 2001a, 2001b; Lied, 2004, 2005; Luckmann, 1990). In line with

this understanding of the concept of dialogue one may talk about a writer’s dialogue

with him- or herself, with other people, with a certain speech genre, with earlier

utterances in a particular sphere of communication, with specific actions, with

different values etc.

By critical events we primarily refer to events which are “uniquely unanticipated,

perceived as random and shocking by observers” (Lödén, 2012), experienced by large

audiences in real time and characterised by being weakly scripted: when the event

occurs, people have little or no access to proven scripts that can tell them how to act.

This situation invite people to interact, reflect on who they are, what they think of

others, and how to relate to others (Filipp, 2001; Lödén, 2005). The terror attacks of

July 22nd

may be seen as a critical event which was unexpected and weakly scripted

and called for a guiding script for how to act. But this critical event was not totally

unscripted. The public and spontaneous reactions partly follow patterns known from

events as the Oklahoma City bombing 1995 and September 11th 2001 (Grider, 2001;

Linenthal, 2001; McCarthy, 2007). In this article we ask if the public reactions and the

values actualised by this critical event may be seen as a part of Norwegian cultural

memory (Assmann, 2008; Connerton, 1989; A. Eriksen, 1995; Halbwachs & Coser,

1992).

We use Paul Connerton’s and Aleida Assmann’s perspectives concerning theory of

cultural memory as an analytical tool helping us to interpret the messages. The study

of cultural memory – pioneered by Maurice Halbwachs (Connerton, 1989, 2009;

Halbwachs, 1935, 1941, 1950; Markschies, Wolf, & Schüler, 2010) – concerns the

ways in which a society uses the past to make sense of and orient in the present. Every

society understands itself and its context in the light of earlier experiences that have

acquired the status of a cultural memory. A society’s narratives about important

historical events are often connected to some core symbols and functions as a

thematisation of cultural values (A. Eriksen, 1995). Connerton states that to be able to

understand what is happening to us, we base our experiences on a prior context. Prior

to any single experience there exist frames of understanding, and to perceive a thing or

an event is to place it inside expected and already experienced frames:

[…] we identify a particular action by recalling at least two types of context

for that action. We situate the agents’ behaviour with reference to its place

in their life history; and we situate that behaviour also with reference to its




38

place in the history of the social settings to which they belong. The narrative

of one life is part of an interconnecting set of narratives; it is embedded in

the story of those groups from which individuals derive their identity

(Connerton, 1989, p. 21; see also Halbwachs & Coser, 1992).

In other words: how we interpret an event or a situation “depends crucially” upon

what social group we belong to (Connerton, 1989, p. 20).4 In line with this frame of

thought we ask if Norwegian stories about the war may be seen as one – among other

– interconnecting sets of narratives in light of which critical events like July 22nd

may

be interpreted.

Assmann underlines that “humans who live within a cultural framework do not

have to start anew in every generation but can make use of the knowledge of previous

generations.” They can plug into “the external storage system of cultural memory”

(Assmann, 2008, p. 272). She also points at the importance of cultural memory when

it comes to the “lasting and normative value of exceptional events in the past” (p.

272). The central aim of cultural memory, she says, is to create links to this normative

past (p. 273). Assmann also emphasises the complexity of cultural memory. Memory

is characterised by “a perpetual interaction between remembering and forgetting” (p.

274). In order to remember some things, one has to forget other things, “but what is

forgotten need not necessarily be lost forever” (p. 276), since remembering has an

active as well as a passive side. She calls the active part of remembering canon. It

functions as a working memory and refers to the number of “normative and formative

texts, places, persons, artefacts, and myths” which are in active use in a society and

are “circulated and communicated in ever new presentations and performances” (p.

276). The passive part of remembering she calls archive. The archive functions as a

reference memory and offers the possibility of retrieving stored cultural goods. It is “a

kind of ‘lost and found’-office for what is no longer needed or immediately

understood” (Assmann, 2008, p. 276) but found interesting or important enough not to

be totally forgotten. The archive “furnishes us with the possibility of comparison and

reflection” (p. 276). Material in the archive needs to be brought back to the realm of

the present to have its potential actualised (p. 280), for example through acts of

interpretation or reinterpretation. In other words: we ask if the terror attacks of July

22nd

2011 may be seen in the light of theory of cultural memory – as a critical event

which was unexpected and weakly scripted in Norwegian society, which therefore

called for guiding scripts for how to act, and which thereby activated already

experienced and proven frames of action from the past that provoked acts of re-

interpretation in the present.

4 According to Eriksen there is a great collective concurrence between the stories about the

War from academic historians and “ordinary people.” There is, though, a clear dissidence to this collective story telling: the Nazis have their own version of this story (A. Eriksen, 1995).




39

The messages: texts and drawings from Oslo Cathedral Square

A short overview of the messages: values expressed

The utterances from Oslo Cathedral Square form a diverse research material.

Hearts, roses and other flowers, love quotes of different kinds, angels, and expressions

of sorrow, unity and solidarity constitute the major part of the expressions from this

public sphere. But there are also expressions of anger, reproofs of the terrorist, cries

for retaliation, expressions of hatred and claims for death for the terrorist, articulated

both through verbal utterances and drawings.

The most frequently expressed values in the 1834 messages that we have studied,

were love (962 utterances/52%) and unity and solidarity (698 utterances/37%). To the

value love we have, when categorising the messages, related all types of verbal

expressions of love as well as drawings of hearts, hugs etc. To the value unity and

solidarity we have related verbal expressions of support to and fellowship with

individuals, the victims, their families, and with Norway, as well as drawings of

people holding hands, rainbows – a frequently used sign of unity in diversity – and

Norwegian flags. But sorrow is also an important component of the utterances, and in

a great deal of them it permeates the ways in which different values are expressed.

Love and unity and solidarity permeated by sorrow seem, that is, to be the values that

the writers of the utterances were in most intense dialogue with. In dialogue with these

values two of the 1834 writers even included the perpetrator’s relatives and friends in

the Norwegian fellowship of unity and solidarity, hearts and roses.

The following two utterances may serve as examples of this unity of sorrow, love

and unity and solidarity:

FIG. 2

In fig. 2 “Love”5 may be seen as the headline of the utterance. The phrase “We

must stand together!”6 is placed on the right hand side, beneath the candle and to the

right of the angel who holds a rose in her hand. According to Gunther Kress and Theo

van Leeuwen the upper part of a composition often represents the composition’s

5 Kjærlighet

6 Vi må stå sammen!




40

generalised essence of information and also its most salient part. It is the foregrounded

part of the message (Kress & Van Leeuwen, 2006, pp. 186-188). The composition’s

left hand side presents “the given”, that which is expected that the reader is assumed

to know already, as part of the culture, while the right hand side contains the “new” or

not yet known, the key information or the composition’s message (pp. 179-181).

Following this line of thinking love is the generalised essence or the theme of this

utterance, while unity and solidarity is the new, the utterance’s main message. This

utterance, that is, suggests a writer who is in dialogue with the values love and unity

and solidarity when expressing his or her reactions to the terror attack.

The Angel is the main character in this utterance. Angels are traditionally

connected with God or heaven or the afterlife, in religions such as Christianity, Islam

and Judaism as well as in new age movements and alternative spirituality. This angel

has a rose in her hand. Roses are often considered the flower of love and deep

feelings, including sorrow. In addition, the rose is also a symbol for the Labour party

and has been their logo since 1978 (NTB, 2011). It was the Labour Party’s youth

camp that was attacked on Utøya island and it was young social democrats who were

killed there. This may suggest that it is against the background of sorrow in the face of

the death of the 69 youths that the writer of this utterance highlights love and unity

and solidarity.

In fig. 3 we also see how sorrow permeates these values:

FIG. 3

The text at the top says: “All of Norway cries”.7 The small circle over the letter å is

drawn as a tear to underline this message. The text at the bottom says: “OSLOVE”.

Here the O is drawn as a heart-shaped Norwegian flag. The same figure we find in the

centre of the drawing. That is: both the texts and the drawings symbolise all of

Norway crying – enclosed in love.

However, in different ways our material also revealed a spirit of resistance to and

confrontation with the terrorist’s actions. Some utterances adopted the language of

war when expressing their opposition: they introduced both love and roses as weapons

against this kind of evil. Others scorned or laughed at Breivik:

7 Hele Norge gråter




41

FIG. 4

Here the 10 year old writer starts with a text adressing the victims and their

parents: “Dear parents and children. It is unfair. We are best on peace here in Norway.

LOVE NN 10 years of age.”8 Then he continues on the next page with a cartoon

showing “Anders” singing and laughing on his way to Utøya where he shoots people.

The police arrive, and “Anders” surrenders. He is put in jail where he, lying on the

bed, states: “Yes! I made it”9 – and laughs. The cartoon is placed on the left hand side

of the page, according to Kress and van Leeuwen signalling what the writer probably

considers as known. On the right hand side, signalling the composition’s message, the

cartoon maker scolds “Anders” as a parent rebuking his child: “You are naughty

Anders!”10

The course of action in this cartoon leaves little doubt that “Anders” here is

Anders Behring Breivik.

Some utterances mock the terrorist more than rebuking him. Fig. 5 may serve as an

example of this. On the first page’s upper part, the part which according to Kress &

van Leeuwen presents the composition’s generalised essence of information, we see

the terrorist behind a barred window while the people of Oslo are outside, laughing:

FIG. 5

Bakhtin presents laughter as a tool with which to inactivate the dangerous and

protect oneself against what is regarded as threatening. Laughter is the people’s

weapon against a superior force: ”One plays with the frightening and laughs at it. The

8 Kjære foreldre og barn. Det er urettferdig. Vi er best på fred her i Norge.

9 Yes! Jeg greide det.

10 Du er slem Anders!




42

frightening is reduced to a scarecrow”(Bakhtin, 2003, pp. 69, SL's translation from

Norwegian). But according to Bakhtin, laughter is also a way in which to distance

oneself from the present and make it history, not allowing it to be a part of the future.

In other words: by laughing at Breivik, the writer neutralises him, places him in the

past, and excludes him from influencing the future.

Two of the 1834 utterances that we have consulted so far, say that they want

Breivik dead. Fig. 6 shows one of them. The main actor in this utterance is a man

holding a poster. It says: “Brevik must die”.

FIG. 6

As this short overview of our material suggests, there are several interesting

aspects present in the messages which ought to be studied and discussed further. In

this article, however, we will elaborate on two themes only: the use of the Norwegian

flag as a symbol of unity and solidarity, and the presentation of love and roses as

weapons. To better understand these two examples, we will elaborate on them in the

light of theory of collective memory.

Elaboration 1: Presentations of the Norwegian flag as a symbol of unity

and solidarity

In some countries the flag is considered a symbol of excluding nationalism. This is

not the main trend in Norway. Norway may be characterised as a country full of flags.

In some places people flag all the time – on red-letter days and anniversaries as well

as on “Sundays with nice weather” (T. H. Eriksen, 1998, p. 3). The flag is, by

tradition, considered a sign of unity and freedom. This may be interpreted in the light

of the struggle for a separate Norwegian flag after the centuries long unions with

Denmark and with Sweden respectively. After 1814, when Norway got a constitution

of its own, the demand for a separate Norwegian flag – a “pure” Norwegian flag

without any elements of other nations’ flags – grew, and the fight for a flag became a

part of the fight for independence. In connection with the dissolution of the union with

Sweden in 1905, the fight ended and Norway got a flag of its own (Kongshavn, 2004,

p. 5). During the Second World War, the German occupants set restrictions on the use

of the flag, Independence Day parades etc. This was one of the measures that was

taken by the occupying force to prevent manifestations of resistance and “misuse”

(p.6) of patriotic symbols. Thus one may say that the Norwegian flag once again




43

became a symbol of the fight for freedom and independence. The then Crown Prince

Olav’s radio speech on May 8th 1945 may support such an interpretation. He ended his

speech by linking the unity during the war with the fight for the Norwegian flag and

for freedom: “We have faithfully kept together during five long and difficult years.

We have each on our border fought for the aim that we are facing today – to hoist our

free Norwegian flag as free women and men” (Ruge, 1948, p. 537, Lied's translation

from Norwegian).

The flag has continued to be a symbol of unity and freedom in the official Norway

after the war, too. The 17th of May, Norway’s national holiday and an official flag-

flying day, where the Norwegian flag is seen “everywhere” – in the hands of children

as well as on “all of” Norway’s flagpoles – may be interpreted as an indicator of this:

it has been celebrated with children’s 17th-of-May-parades and flags all over the

country since the end of the 19th century.

FIG. 7

After the terror attacks of July 22nd

2011 this lasting understanding of the flag as a

symbol of unity and solidarity became even more apparent, when many participants

on social media changed their profile pictures and replaced them with Norwegian

flags and OSLO written with hearts. The following picture from Sue Thet Moon’s

article from July 23rd

2011 shows this:

FIG. 8

(retrieved from Su Thet Mon, 2011)




44

Some also expressed that this is not the time to try to “score cheap points

concerning immigration etc.” but rather “a time for unity and solidarity, not hatred and

fear” (Su Thet Mon, 2011, p. 5). This combination of flags and/or hearts and/or other

expressions of unity and solidarity is a frequent feature in our material, too, as the

following three utterances display:

FIG. 9

Under the rainbow and a sky filled with multi-coloured hearts together with a

Norwegian flag, two girls are holding hands. The one with the brown hair says: “We

stick together here in Oslo”,11

and the fair-haired one answers: “Yes, we stick together

in Oslo”.12

The value unity and solidarity is here represented by the content of the

verbal texts which explicitly highlight togetherness, by the holding of hands, the

Norwegian flag, and the rainbow which is a traditional symbol of unity in diversity.

The value love is represented by the hearts.

It is noteworthy that the hearts are multi-coloured and placed just above the

rainbow. It is possible to see this as a mere play with colours. But it is also possible to

interpret the multi-coloured hearts as a combination of love and unity in diversity.

Such an interpretation is supported by the fact that the image of “children of the

rainbow” is a current and well known symbol of unity in diversity in Norway.

Lillebjørn Nilsen’s song “Barn av regnbuen” (Children of the rainbow) has been

frequently used in Norwegian schools since its release in 1973, and it is therefore

likely to assume that the song is known by most Norwegian schoolchildren. This song

was also sung in all Norwegian towns on one of the days during the trial against

Behring Breivik in 2012 as a joint protest to his message that this song is a threat in

that it brainwashes Norwegian schoolchildren and is propaganda for a multicultural

society because of its message of unity this cultural diversity. Thus, the notion of unity

and a sky with a colourful rainbow was a current and well known symbol-combination

in Norway before July 22nd

. 61 of the messages we have studied include rainbows,

often together with other symbols of love and unity such as hearts, roses, Norwegian

11

Vi holder sammen her i Oslo 12

Ja vi holder sammen i Oslo




45

flags and verbal expressions of unity, as in fig. 10 where the verbal text says “Let us

live in unity and solidarity and in love”:13

FIG. 10

Against this background I find it possible to interpret the value unity and solidarity

in fig 9 as represented not only by the content of the verbal texts, the holding of hands,

the Norwegian flag, and the rainbow, but also by the sky with a blend of multi-

coloured hearts. The young artist, that is, was in dialogue with the values love,

diversity and unity and solidarity when making this utterance.

FIG. 11

In fig. 11 the pronounced elements are flags, a heart and one light- and one dark-

brown hand. They form different reliefs: a Norwegian flag constitutes the background

for the two hands, and in their turn the two diverse hands constitute the background

for the heart-shaped flag. Theory of relief in utterances suggests that the writer’s main

argument functions as the foreground in argumentative utterances, while values and

attitudes that give perspective to and explain what relevance the writer’s arguments

and message have, function as the background part (Evensen, 1991, 2002; Evensen &

Vagle, 2003; Lied, 2004, 2006; Ongstad, 2002). Following this way of reasoning, the

unity and solidarity of the Norwegian flag in this utterance gives background and

perspective to the diversity which the two hands indicate, while the diversity specified

by the two hands gives background and perspective to the love and the unity and

solidarity signalled by the heart-shaped Norwegian flag. Thus love, unity and

13

La oss leve i samhold og skjærlighet




46

solidarity, and diversity are values which here are intertwined and interdependent.

They define each other and give perspective to each other.

The last utterance which we will present here, fig. 12, has one main element: a

crying or bleeding Norwegian flag at half-mast:

FIG. 12

Red drops are falling from it. Are they tears or blood or blood-filled tears? A flag

in this position as well as tears are, in a Norwegian context, signs of mourning. But as

the flag is considered a sign of unity, collective sorrow may be seen as the focus of

this utterance, too. The artist here is thus in dialogue with the value of unity and

solidarity permeated by sorrow.

The terror attacks of July 22nd

may be seen as a critical event taking place in

Norwegian society: it was perceived by observers as unexpected and shocking, and it

was weakly scripted. But it was not totally unscripted. One example of this comes

forth in Sue Thet Mon’s article from July 23rd

2011. In her article she shows that the

use of the Norwegian flag as a symbol of unity and solidarity started immediately after

the terror attacks and was instantly understood and reproduced by participants on

social media. And as we have tried to show so far in this article, it was also a

frequently occurring symbol of these values in messages from Oslo Cathedral Square.

These examples may indicate that the flag is a symbol in active use in Norway and, as

such, easy to apply when reactions to the terror attacks of July 22nd

were to be

communicated and circulated.

We have suggested that the flag has been a symbol of resistance to oppression, of

fighting for freedom and of unity and solidarity at several critical phases in Norwegian

history, and has continued as a prominent symbol of unity and solidarity right up to

the present. Against this background we also suggest that this use of the flag may be

understood in line with Assmann’s thinking of remembrance: People living in Norway

made use of the knowledge of previous generations and did not have to start anew

when expressing their thoughts in opposition to the terrorist’s actions. They could

“plug into” one part of the “storage system of cultural memory” and thus create links

to the normative past as well as to the present: the use of the flag has been and still is

an active part of Norwegian remembrance. It is in active use and is “circulated and

communicated in ever new presentations and performances”. As such, it may be

understood as a part of canon – and therefore easy to circulate and communicate “in




47

ever new presentations and performances” (Assmann, 2008, p. 276). Fig. 11 is one

clear example of such reinterpretation. In this utterance the concept of Norwegian

unity is re-actualised and further defined through an act of interpretation: unity is

characterised by diversity; dark brown as well as light brown hands are needed to

define Norwegian unity and solidarity.

This interpretation of the Norwegian flag as a symbol of diversity, unity and

solidarity does not exclude that certain groups of Norwegians may use the flag as a

symbol of exclusionary nationalism and promote “Norway for white Norwegians”.

But this is a thinking that has a rather weak representation in the messages that we

have studied. This does not mean, however, that it is totally absent. Some utterances

may imply that the writers have met this kind of thinking. We shall return to this in

our concluding reflections at the end of the article. But before that, we shall elaborate

on our other theme, namely roses and love presented as weapons.

Elaboration 2: Presentations of love and roses as weapons

Some utterances adopt the language of war in their struggle to understand and

create meaning in the meaningless situation of loss and terror that Breivik’s actions

caused:

FIG. 13 FIG. 14 FIG. 15

The first of these three utterances, fig. 13, plainly states that “Love is our

weapon…”.14

The text is placed inside a heart with 90 small red, white and pink hearts

forming the heart’s outer border. The value love is here represented by the word

“love” as well as by 91 hearts. In the second utterance, fig. 14, the need for weapons

in the fight for understanding and meaning is explicitly stated: “Terror, mass killings,

inconceivable loss. Fear, horror that you cannot comprehend. How could this happen?

TV pictures keep rolling in from Irak, Afganistan. Now it is here, now it is us. Yet we

don’t understand the suffering, the sorrow. We are all ready to fight with candles,

roses that is our weapon. Our deepest compassion”.15

Underneath the text the writers

14

Kjærlighet er vårt våpen 15

Terror, massedrap, ufattelige tap/Redsel, gru kan ikke fatte/Hvordan kunne dette skje?/TV bilder ruller av sted fra/Irak, Afganistan/Nå er det her, nå er det oss/Enda har det ikke gått




48

have drawn roses. The text and the roses are placed inside a heart. And fig. 15

explicitly says that suitable weapons in the fight against terror, are flowers: “To all

who have passed away! Flowers against terror.”16

Love/roses/flowers and weapons are usually seen as opposite or conflicting

categories. But sometimes these categories blend, for instance in Mahatma Ghandi’s

doctrine of non violence and in the story about Harry Potter where love is presented as

the weapon in the defence against evil – and here in fig. 13-15. By piecing these

opposites together, as is done here, the writers create a room for a fight which is not

violent. “We won’t give in! We’ll fight back! But we’ll do it our way and choose our

own weapons!” are messages that one may read into these texts. These messages may

also be interpreted as being in dialogue with Prime Minister Stoltenberg’s message:

the way in which to fight the critical event that the nation faced on July 22nd

is by

standing firm in defending our values, and responding with “even more democracy.

Even more humanity. But never naivety” (Stoltenberg, 2011b), holding forth that the

guilty would be held responsible, and drawing attention to “dignity, compassion and

resolve” (Stoltenberg, 2011a). They may also be in dialogue with Crown Prince

Haakon’s memorandum that “We have chosen to respond to cruelty with closeness.

We have chosen to meet hatred with unity. We have chosen to show what we stand

for” (Haakon, 2011, my translation).

But we ask if this kind of response may have even deeper roots, too. Stoltenberg

characterised the critical event of July 22nd as the worst atrocity Norway has seen

since the Second World War (Stoltenberg, 2011a). And one may ask: is it possible that

there may exist already experienced frameworks of reaction (Connerton, 1989),

proven scripts or “a storage system of cultural memory” from the Second World War

in Norway which official Norway and the Norwegian people could “plug into”

(Assmann, 2008) and give suggestions for how to act in the aftermath of July 22nd

? In

this connection we want to draw attention to two such possible scripts. The first

concerns reactions from the church in spring 1942. The Norwegian church fell out

with the Nazi authorities early in the War and protested inter alia against the Hird’s

violent actions and the persecution of Jews. The climax in the Church’s fight was in

spring 1942. On February 26th the Oslo bishop Eivind Berggrav – who was considered

the leader of the Church’s resistance movement – was dismissed from his position by

the Nazis (Austad, 2005). On Good Friday April 3rd

a thousand people went to Oslo

Cathedral to attend the service led by Berggrav. But as the bishop was dismissed and

also arrested, there was no service. In protest, people stayed on the Cathedral Square

singing the Norwegian national hymn and the national anthem. The Hird and the

police tried to disperse the crowd, but in vain (Arkivverket). In other words: people

protested against the abuse and the oppression by singing together. Following king

Haakon VII in his speeches after the War, the way in which church and school

opp/for en lidelse, for en sorg/Vi står alle klare til å sloss/med lys, roser som er våpenet vårt./ Våre dypeste medfølelser. 16

Til alle som er borte! Blomster mot terror.




49

challenged the German oppression made an impression beyond Norway’s borders

(Sommerfeldt, 1947).

The second factor which we want to draw attention to is messages from the

management group of the Norwegian Underground Resistance Movement and The

Defence Command in spring 1945. The War in Norway ended in May 1945. A

pamphlet which the management group of the Underground Resistance Movement

wrote to their members in April 1945, ended like this: “The parole is: Dignity –

Calmness – Discipline” (Hjemmefrontens ledelse, 1945, SL's translation). And on

May 3rd

1945 the illegal newspaper The Chronicle (Kronikken) published the article

“The days ahead” (“Dagene som kommer”) by The Defence Command (Forsvarets

Overkommando) saying:

[…] It is completely new that the nations, while the war still rages, is

mobilising the best of forces to work for peace and a safe future. […] the

war has not killed the people’s wish for and belief that we win the most and

the furthest by means of peaceful pursuits. […] The hatred against the

oppressors, the memory of all the innocent lives they have taken, may

certainly tempt us to retaliate. But we don’t help the many who have lost

their lives in the fight for the country’s future life, by fighting when the battle

is over. It is more in keeping with our traditions that punishment takes place

through law and order. We serve our country best and honour our fallen

comrades highest by […] building the country again, and, if possible, make

it richer and brighter for everyone […] (Forsvarets Overkommando, 1945,

SL's translation).17

The concept “during the war” still has a very special significance with many

Norwegians. Few are in doubt about the war in question: it is the Second World War

and the Norwegian part of it, from April 9th 1940 to May 8

th 1945. These five years

have, according to Anne Eriksen, great symbolic relevance. Experiences and events

from these years are constantly remembered and are still relevant in Norwegian

identity formation (A. Eriksen, 1995), as the following message from an 8-year-old

child implies: “It is good that so many show their concern for all the sad things that

have happened. Nothing as bad as this has happened since the war. I think of you and

of all the bad things that happened last Friday. Greetings from NN, 8 years.”18

17

Thanks to associate professor Inger Haug at Hedmark University College who shared with us her fathers’ scrap-book from the Second World War and made us aware of the pamphlet as well as the journal from spring 1945 that we have referred to here. 18

Det er veldig bra at så mange viser omsorg for alt det triste som har skjedd. Det har ikke skjedd noe så ille siden krigen. Jeg tenker på dere og på alt det vonne som skjedde på forie fredag. Hilsen NN på 8 år.




50

FIG. 16

In the two examples above from the War we see that the response to abuse,

oppression, and the possible threat from a beaten enemy who is still in the country, is

non-violence in the form of singing, peaceful demonstration, dignity, calmness, and

justice. This was also the response from the official Norway in the immediate hours

after the terror attacks of July 22nd. Were the Norwegian government in dialogue with

these and similar messages from 1945 when trying to find a proven script for how to

react and what value-messages to send to the Norwegian people in the immediate

hours after the critical event of July 22nd

? We don’t suggest that scripts from the

Second World War were the only scripts available for official Norway and the

Norwegian people in the aftermath of July 22nd

, but we ask if they may serve as

possible scripts, present in Norway’s own history and a part of society’s collective

memory.

The critical event like the one taking place on Utøya and in central Oslo in 2011,

was in a Norwegian context a weakly scripted situation “with significance beyond the

immediate context” (Lödén, 2005, p. 11, SL's translation). But here we suggest that

proven scripts were not entirely absent, asking if the example from Oslo Cathedral

Square in 1942 and the appeal from the Norwegian Defence Command to the

Norwegian Underground Resistence Movement in 1945 may serve as examples of

such scripts. When discussing the use of Norwegian flags in the utterances from Oslo

Cathedral Square we have suggested – in line with Assmann’s thinking – that the use

of flags in the utterances from Oslo Cathedral Square following July 22nd

may be seen

as an active part of Norwegian remembrance, and more precisely: a part of canon.

This is not so with the use of roses, flowers and love as weapons. As Stoltenberg

emphasised, July 22nd

was the worst atrocity Norway has seen since the Second World

War. It was a critical event which was “uniquely unanticipated, perceived as random

and shocking by observers” (Lödén, 2005, 2012) and not immediately understood

(Assmann, 2008). But the bringing of the Second World War onto the scene, as

Stoltenberg did, created a possibility to compare and reflect on what the war – as an

“exceptional event in the past” (ibid.) in Norway’s own history – might give of

assistance when trying to make sense of and orient in the face of the present terror.

Following Assmann, we ask if the War and the non-violent reactions in February 1942

and April 1945 may be seen as a part of the passive part of Norwegian cultural




51

memory – the archive – where cultural goods that are no longer needed but found

interesting and important enough not to be forgotten, are stored. We also ask if the

values from the two situations mentioned above and other situations, texts and

artefacts from the War and the immediate post-war period, consciously or

unconsiously may have been brought back into the realm of the present by the critical

event of July 22nd

, may have provoked acts of re-interpretation, and may have given

proven frames of action both with Stoltenberg and his advisers and with the

Norwegian people. Stoltenberg’s value-messages were listened to by the Norwegian

people: people reacted to the terror by participating in rose parades and

commemoration gatherings, by singing “Children of the rainbow”, by placing roses,

candles, drawings, texts, teddy bears, footballs, and other forms of greetings at central

places in towns and villages all over Norway. But the question is if the response to his

messages would have been so undisputed if the values to which he appealed, were not

latent in Norwegian cultural memory as values that were to be used when facing and

trying to make sense of critical or exeptional events – like a war or unexpected and

shocking terror attacks such as the one of July 22nd

.

Concluding reflections

Initially in this article we asked if central values which people were in dialogue

with in the messages from Oslo Cathedral Square in the aftermath of July 22nd

2011,

may be seen as a part of Norwegian cultural memory, and if so, how. We have

answered in the affirmative on this question, by elaborating on presentations of the

Norwegian flag as a symbol of the value of unity and solidarity, and on presentations

of love and roses as weapons promoting the values of love, humanity and calmness. In

our discussion we have drawn on theory of cultural memory and suggested that the

use of the Norwegian flag in the messages may be understood in the frame of

Assmann’s term canon, representing the active part of cultural remembrance, and that

the message from the use of roses and hearts may be understood in the frame of the

term archive, representing the passive part of remembrance.

The values which were brought into focus here may be seen in a wider context than

being individual writers’ dialogue partners in the face of a critical event. To further

support this assertion, we will turn to the preamble for the guidelines for the

Norwegian state’s educational system. The idea of a comprehensive national school

where education is free for all and with a common, compulsory content, is one of the

main principles of this system today. This principle has led to common guidelines and

curricula for the state school system all over Norway. Through these curricula,

knowledge which society finds so important that all its inhabitants should know it is

imparted. The preamble for this system sets a value-based platform for education and

teaching in Norwegian schools ("Education Act Norway ", 2010; Stubø, 2012).

Respect for human dignity, equality and solidarity are among the values listed here.

These values are, that is, among the values that Norwegian authorities want to be

central in Norwegian society. These were also values which our material brought into




52

focus. In other words: values which were central in the utterances from Oslo Cathedral

Square in the aftermath of July 22nd

2011 are in line with central values in Norwegian

society, values which are in active use in Norwegian society and are “circulated and

communicated in ever new presentations and performances” (Assmann, 2008, p. 276).

As such they are a part of what Assmann calls canon.

But in the same way as the reactions after the war were not always in line with the

principles that we like to think is prominent in Norway, human dignity, unity and

solidarity do not permeate all of our society. Fig. 17 highlights this. It says: “To

everybody in the whole world. Hi. I very sorry for what happened downtown Oslo and

in Utøya. He who did it does not like Muslim. But I am Muslim and I am normal. We

are nice. Bye!”19

FIG. 17

We find it thought-provoking that a child or a young person living in Norway in

the aftermath of July 22nd

found it necessary to write to the whole world that he/she, as

a Muslim, is normal and nice.

This utterance is noteworthy. It tells us inter alia not to generalise: Even though

there are Muslim extremists, not all Muslims are. Even though Breivik is a terrorist,

not all Norwegian Christians are. And even though humanity and love, unity and

solidarity are important values in Norwegian school and society, these values still

need to be highlighted, reactivated and reinterpreted – in school as well as in other

parts of society.

19

Til Alle sammen i hele verden. Hei. Jeg veldig lei meg med det som skjedde i Oslo setrum og i Utøya. Han som gjore det liker ikke muslim. Men jeg er muslim og er normal. Vi er snille. Ha det!!




53

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